2015/11 Australia trip - Stirling Ranges |
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Dear All,
This is the third part of our story, and we were about halfway through our exploration of Australia’s southwest corner. We had just left Albany, the area’s biggest city, about the size of White Bear Lake, and were heading for the mountains of the Stirling Ranges.
Friday October 23rd
Albany had been busy with Friday evening shoppers and the road north out of town was busy too, at least by Australian standards. We were worried about finding 
camping space on a Friday night, but most of the traffic left us to take the South Coast Highway. By the time we passed the turning to the little park of Porongurup, which does not have any camping, we had the road mostly to ourselves.
The mountains looked impressive but as we got closer they disappeared behind foothills. The Stirling Ranges campground at Moingup Springs was quite small, not much more than a parking area with space behind the fence for tents. However it also had water and flush toilets, a rare treat on this trip. We took a quiet corner.
The host was quite chatty and he told us where to go look for flowers. Taking his advice we went for a walk along the roadside by the campground, as he said there 
were more flowers there because of the extra light and water. He and his wife were driving off to a high spot where they could get cell phone reception to Skype their family, but when they saw us they showed us their recent finds along the road. We collected these pictures in the last few minutes of daylight. There were also some blue orchids still in bud, not yet opened.
Overhead were dozens of Carnaby’s cockatoos arguing noisily about who was going to sleep where. Actually, in that light I couldn’t tell them 
from the other (Baudin’s) black cockatoos we’d seen at Conto’s Field. The host identified them.
Saturday October 24th
We had a drizzly night and a drizzlier morning, but set out anyway to explore the park. Despite the damp, the fire rating was still at “high”. Note that there are four levels above high. 
We drove the gravel road up into midst of the mountains, half obscured by cloud. We saw only a handful of cars all day which was good as we spent a lot of time in reverse. I’d drive slowly along until Sandie cried out “flower!” and then I’d reverse up to it. We’d check it out and end up scanning the roadside for a hundred yards in both directions and finding a dozen more.
There was probably more variety here in the flowers than anywhere else we’d been. There were a few places like these where there was a 
blaze of uniform colour from shrubs, but mostly it was just a mix of plants with wildly different colors and shapes, often hidden by the first line of shrubs.
It’s not the kind of country you can just drive through; if you don’t get out of the car then you miss the beauty. But if you do you might get wet; most of our flower pictures show water drops.
The road led to overlooks and to foot trails up to the mountain peaks, with names like Talyuberlup, Mondurup, Gog, and Magog, an odd mix of 
the aboriginal and biblical. The mountains are of sandstone and quartzite, quite different from the granite we’d become used to. The low clouds weren’t encouraging for mountain hiking and some of the trails had very unfriendly jagged anklesmashers hidden amongst the bush so we didn’t get too ambitious.
The day was mainly drizzly; the sun came out briefly and then so did the flies so we were happy when drizzly resumed. It took us most of the day to get to Red Gum Spring on the other side of the park.
We had a little daylight left and drove to another piece of the park around Bluff Knoll. The road took us up to some dramatic scenery but the weather had turned cold and windy as well as wet, so we didn’t do more than look.